Brocky Rules

Brocky was contributed to pagat.com by Mark Rinaldi. It is a variation of Chase the Ace, also known as Cuckoo, and follows its rules except where stated here.

A standard 52-card deck is used, without jokers. As in Chase the Ace, cards rank from king (high) down to ace (low), and suits have no effect.

Lives are kept as chips. Each player begins with the same number of chips, agreed before play. A player who loses a life puts a chip into the pot.

The published rules do not say how the game ends. The usual practice, taken from Chase the Ace, is that a player with no lives left is out, and the last player remaining wins.

The dealer deals one card face down to each player.

Starting with the player to the dealer's left and going clockwise, each player in turn may keep their card or exchange it with the player on their left.

The dealer plays last and may exchange their card for the top card of the deck.

A player who is asked to exchange while holding a king does not exchange. Instead, they must whinny like a horse and then take one chip back from the pot, unless they already hold all the chips they started with.

The player who asked keeps their own card. Play then continues with the player to the left of the king holder.

If the top card of the deck is a king, the dealer may not exchange with it.

When everyone has had a turn, all cards are turned face up.

Every tie is broken, not only a tie for the lowest card. Kings are the exception: players holding kings keep them even if more than one king is showing, and kings take no part in tie-breaks.

To break a tie, the tied players discard their cards and are each dealt a new card face down. In clockwise order from the dealer, each of them may exchange with the next player who holds a face-down card. The last of them may exchange with the top card of the deck. The new cards are then turned up.

If there are several ties, they are broken one at a time, starting with the tie that includes the player nearest the dealer's left. Only the players in that tie receive new cards.

Any new ties created by the replacement cards are dealt with after all the original ties, in the same clockwise order. This repeats until every card on the table is different.

When all the cards are different, the player with the lowest card loses a life, and the next hand is dealt.